


In the Absence of a Fall-Back Plan

by Butterfly



Series: Scenes from a Resurrection Story [7]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-it fic, Gen, Kady Orloff-Diaz/William "Penny" Adiyodi (mentioned/minor), Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn (mentioned/minor), Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh (mentioned) - Freeform, Resurrection story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: Penny does some deep-breathing exercises.





	In the Absence of a Fall-Back Plan

**Author's Note:**

> No content warnings really needed this time, I think, which is a surprising first for this series.

Everything was in constant motion these days, it seemed. Everything but him, anyway. He felt more out of place now than he ever had before – the only person in the room who wasn't laser-focused on getting Coldwater back out of the Underworld. Even Kady seemed as invested, in her own way, as the rest of them, cursing at her hedge-witch lackey when he wasn't getting things done quickly enough.

It's not... it's not that Penny _wanted_ Coldwater to be dead. He'd liked the guy well enough by the end. But. But...

Julia was flipping avidly through Malicot's Compleat Spellbook For Interdimensional Accidents, taking notes and mumbling to herself, her fingertips messy with ink from the occasional enthusiastic moment. From time to time, she would call something out, and Alice would add it to the long list on their whiteboard – rituals and ingredients and Circumstances that were needed to be accounted for during the spell. Set of spells, apparently. It was going to take over half a day to cast this thing, and Alice and Julia were currently debating if they needed to enlist some more magicians for extra juice.

The... the body that Alice had created was lying on the couch, and Margo was currently the one keeping an eye on it, because apparently the circulation and breathing spells had to be re-upped from time to time. Someone – Penny guessed Eliot – had carefully dressed the body in what had to be the most fashion-forward clothes he'd ever seen Coldwater wearing, and there was a pillow tucked under its head, despite the fact that they all knew there was no actual _person_ inside it yet. Margo was sitting on the floor next to the couch, holding its hand in hers and stroking it like it was capable of feeling her.

Eliot smoked next to the window, occasionally doing a tut to banish the smell to the air outside. He was staring at the body, too, though his turn to watch it had finished about an hour ago. His mouth kept twitching and he would look away, but then he would turn back again, as if magnetically drawn.

Poor sap. All of them, really. They'd gotten to know each other so well, in this timeline, before all the shit had hit the fan. They'd _survived_ together. They were a family. He'd... it hadn't been like that in his timeline, even before everything went south. They had all been twos and threes, not... not like this.

He met Kady's eyes and jerked his head towards the door. She squinted and then gave a slight nod.

She joined him about three minutes after he'd gotten outside.

“What's up, Twenty-Three?” she asked, always with the posturing.

“Look, it seems like we might actually be able to do this thing,” Penny said, leaning against the wall and keeping an eye on the door. “And that brings up a concern for me.”

“A concern?” She raised an eyebrow.

“My timeline? Quentin Coldwater got resurrected there, too. It didn't go well for any of us.” Penny scuffed his heel against the floor, lowering his eyes and shrugging. “And I don't think anyone in that room is considering the possibility that Coldwater might come back... missing something. Or with something extra that we don't want around.”

Kady rubbed the back of her neck, shaking her head. “You're telling me this because... oh, let me guess. You know your ladylove would shut this train of thought the fuck down, so you're telling the hardass bitch because you hope I won't. Well, surprise, Twenty-Three, I give a shit about whether or not Coldwater comes back, so if you're hoping for permission or absolution, I don't have any of that for you.” She took a heavy step towards him. “But I can promise you one thing – if you don't talk to Julia... if you take _this_ choice out of her hands, too? She will never fucking forgive you for it.”

“If I tell her-”

“Yeah, she might tell you to go screw yourself. That's a risk you gotta take, because you don't have the right to keep doing this shit to her.” Kady's voice wavered slightly. “You don't have the fucking right. The people in that room, the ones fucking killing themselves to try to get back Coldwater? You get in the way of that, they _will_ end you. And Julia would probably let them. Talk to her, Twenty-Three. This isn't your Quentin. This is hers. If something wrong comes back, let the people who love him make the call on whether or not to put him down.”

“We've seen where that goes,” Penny said, desperately. “We spent months letting a monster roam around killing people because it looked like someone Coldwater loved. And what did that get us?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Kady said. “Twenty-Three, maybe you didn't notice but... Eliot fucking survived. We saved him. And I don't give a damn how things went in your world, because that's what we do here. We try to fucking save each other. We don't give up. Hope is _never_ fucking lost, so stuff your pessimism up your ass and get with the goddamn program.” And, with that, she turned on her heel and stormed back into the penthouse.

Penny waited outside for a few more minutes, pressing his head back against the wall and breathing deeply.

When he finally came back into the room, it was during the middle of a card-call, and he could hear his own voice – the other Penny – say, in a weary tone, “-about three months ago. But at least Coldwater is fucking happy about it.”

“Come on, Penny, you aren't a little excited?” Coldwater was definitely a _lot_ excited. “There's a whole ecosystem down here. We could spend years charting this place if we had to, I mean, if everyone doesn't get us out of here soon.”

“I would _literally_ kill you.”

“Too late, dumbass.” Coldwater laughed. “God, Jules. I saw a fish swimming mid-air yesterday. It was, I shit you not, _magical_. I wanted to draw a picture of it for you, but I don't think I can take paper with me out of this place. Oh! That reminds me – Jules, tell Kady to check Mortimer's Guidelines in addition to Kelliger's Legal-”

“Seriously, Coldwater, would it kill you to focus on your own bullshit for _two fucking seconds_? It's like walking a fucking Chihuahua, yap-yap-yap, gotta run over _here_ to pee on a bush, gotta run over _there_ to bark at a flower, gotta-”

Julia had her hands clasped over her mouth, only barely stifling delighted giggles.

“Hey guys,” she called out in a trilling tone as soon as Penny's voice cut off. “We're almost ready, I promise! When everything is in place, we'll send out the beacon and it'll lead you to the nearest junction. Um, then there's a trial? It says that it'll test 'bravery of the heart and stoutness of the will' but I'm not sure if that's a test for the returning soul or for the, uh, casters of the spell. I guess we'll find out. Kady's here, so she can-”

“Yeah, thanks, Coldwater. I found Kelliger's and it's got something useful in it,” Kady said. “I'll grab the Mortimer's too, see what it says. So, uh, Penny. You made one choice a while back, but once you're- once you're free, I don't know. Maybe you'll make a different one. You'll have the option anyway.” She looked up, right into Penny's eyes, challengingly. “Getting to make your own choice, free and clear. That shit matters.” Penny nodded, point taken.

“We all... we all miss you,” Alice said, softly at first, but getting louder as she went on. “Both of you. Once we get Q back, I promise that our next step will be working on breaking your contact, Penny. Now that we know there's a chance, we won't give up again. You're part of-” She frowned. “Oh. It's done.”

“It's so good to hear Q sound excited,” Julia said, pressing her thumb down against the faded ten of diamonds and grinning. “I've missed that.”

“The difference has been... very clear,” Alice said, quiet again. “How- how close are we to being ready, really, Julia?”

“I think we can do it tomorrow night,” she said. “We need a physical location with a strong memory of Q's presence. He said two moons would be better, so Fillory? Whitespire, maybe?”

“Not Whitespire,” Eliot said. He'd moved away from the window and was sitting on the arm of the couch at Q's feet. The body's feet. “He never actually spent much time there. We should- we should go to the mosaic.”

“Oh, _shitballs_ ,” Margo said. “Of course. Yeah, El, of course we will. It's perfect.”

“Why the mosaic?” Alice asked, raising her hand slightly. “Actually... what's the mosaic?”

“You were never a Fillory fan, were you?” Margo asked.

“Fantasy never appealed to me.” Alice shrugged. “So, it's in the books?”

“The beauty of all life,” Julia said. “Q said something about getting the third key there, but he didn't want to give any details. I just guessed it was as stressful as the rest of them and didn't want to push too hard. What happened, exactly?”

“Personal shit,” Margo said. “I had to dig up a fucking _corpse_ for that quest, ugh. Ruined my nails for days. Weeks, maybe.”

“Q solved a puzzle in Fillory,” Eliot said. “It took him some time. There should be the memory of his presence there. Peaches and plums prove it, I think.”

“Peaches and plums... that's what you said that day in the park.” Alice perked up, tilting her head to look at Eliot. “That's how he knew it was you. What does it mean?”

“Personal shit, blondie. Don't overstep,” Margo said sharply.

“Don't- you don't have to protect me on this one, Bambi,” Eliot said, glancing up to look Alice straight-on. “Peaches and plums were... a kind of shorthand for me and Q. A way of telling him something that no one else would understand.”

“That isn't an explanation,” Alice said. “Not really.”

“Because it's- it's hard to explain.” Eliot's gaze flitted around the room, touching on each one of them in turn before finally resting on the body and staying there. “In order to get the key, Q and I went to Fillory to solve the mosaic. We stayed there for a lifetime. Had a family together. Peaches and plums meant... meant that I remembered it all, too. That it mattered to me, too.”

“A lifetime?” Penny asked.

Eliot shrugged. “Then Bambi rewound time and stopped it before it happened. Except that it _did_ happen, because, because Q had written a letter and had peaches and plums sent to her wedding. So it must have happened. The mosaic... it'll remember him. That's the important part.”

“Still doesn't make any sense to me,” Penny said. “But if it works for the spell, I guess that's what matters.”

Alice sat there completely still, looking as fragile and brittle as a porcelain doll. Eliot had moved to the kitchen, pulling out a bottle of something expensive and pouring himself a glass with shaking hands. Kady only nodded thoughtfully, then got on the phone to yell at Pete about something else she needed him to do. Margo settled back down on the floor by that empty body, picking up its hand again and stroking it.

And Julia – Julia hadn't stopped staring at Eliot since he'd first mentioned the mosaic, though when Penny came closer, she shook herself out of it and sent half a smile in his direction. “Hey. You think we should sleep here tonight and head to Fillory tomorrow, or should we go now?”

“Tomorrow,” Penny said. “Let's sleep on comfortable beds while we have the chance. Um. But I was hoping I could talk to you in private?”

“Sure, of course,” she said.

They went to the bedroom she'd been using, and she sat down on the bed and eyed him carefully as he paced. “You planning on wearing a hole in the floor?”

“Sorry. Sorry, I just...” Penny stopped himself. Grabbed the chair from the desk and pulled it up next to the bed, sitting down. Julia looked a little puzzled. Penny took in another fortifying breath. “I'm worried, Julia. Because... because we're about to bring _Quentin Coldwater_ back from the dead. I'm not just worried. I'm fucking terrified.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes bottomless and unfathomable.

“Just- uh. What do we do if... if we can't bring back all of him?” Penny looked down at his hands, tightened them helplessly into fists. “In my experience, shit doesn't always work out for the best.”

Her hands covered his, and he relaxed under her touch.

“Okay. Okay, I see where you're coming from,” she said, and she was being so much kinder than he deserved. “Q's life is... non-negotiable, okay?”

“Okay,” he breathed out, fingers still twitching slightly. “But what do we-”

“His wards will be down when he first comes back,” she said, softly. “He won't have had time to put them up. So, check him out. If anything seems off, you let me know. And we'll fix it. Whatever it is, we will fix it.”

He nodded. It was all he could manage at first. Her hands were still covering his, keeping the trembling from getting worse.

“Tomorrow night, then,” he said, making his voice as steady as he could. “We'll tell destiny to go screw itself.”

When she was here, he could almost make himself believe it was possible.

 


End file.
